Key Arguments

• Creator image: ‘You solitary, you are going the way of the creator: a God you would create for yourself out of your Seven Devils!’
• Lover paradox: ‘yourself do you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers can despise.’
• Creative motive of despising: ‘The lover wants to create, because he despises!’
• Criterion of love’s knowledge: ‘What does he know of love who has not had to despise precisely what he loved!’
• Teleology and sacrifice: ‘I love him who wants to create beyond himself and thereby perishes.—’

Source Quotes

You must want to consume yourself in your own flame: how could you want to become new unless you have first become ashes! You solitary, you are going the way of the creator: a God you would create for yourself out of your Seven Devils! You solitary, you are going the way of the lover: yourself do you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers can despise.

You solitary, you are going the way of the creator: a God you would create for yourself out of your Seven Devils! You solitary, you are going the way of the lover: yourself do you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers can despise. The lover wants to create, because he despises!

You solitary, you are going the way of the lover: yourself do you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers can despise. The lover wants to create, because he despises! What does he know of love who has not had to despise precisely what he loved! With your love go into your isolation, and with your creating, my brother: and only later will righteousness limp along after you.

With my tears go into your isolation, my brother. I love him who wants to create beyond himself and thereby perishes.— Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Key Concepts

• You solitary, you are going the way of the creator: a God you would create for yourself out of your Seven Devils!
• You solitary, you are going the way of the lover: yourself do you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers can despise.
• The lover wants to create, because he despises! What does he know of love who has not had to despise precisely what he loved!
• I love him who wants to create beyond himself and thereby perishes.—

Context

Culminating vision: creator-love fuses self-love with self-despising to propel transfiguration beyond the human, at the cost of one’s life.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Affirms eros of self-overcoming: love as a power that both affirms and negates the given self to create higher forms.

Zarathustra

Benediction and farewell: commands the union of love and creating in isolation; esteems the one who risks perishing for creation.